I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to lawn maintenance equipment and more particularly to such equipment which can be used not only to cut the lawn but which can also be used as a leaf shredder or blower as well as a snow blower.
II. Description of the Prior Art
There are known lawn maintenance devices which include means for vegetation shredding or mulching. Some of these devices are single purpose devices used solely for gathering and shredding vegetation refuse from the ground. Others are attached to rotary-type lawn mowers to shred grass as it is cut from the lawn.
A major drawback with single purpose shredders is that two machines are required for adequate lawn care; a lawn mower and a shredder. For this reason, the single purpose shredders are too expensive for the individual householder and find their greatest use by commercial businesses.
The shredding and mulching devices attached to rotary-type lawn mowers are of various configurations. Some of these devices have a shredding blade or element which replaces the lawn mower cutting blade. Thus, if leaves are to be mulched, the cutting blade is replaced by the shredder blade and the lawn gone over to pickup and shred the leaves.
Others of these devices incorporate a shredding or mulching element in addition to the lawn cutting blade. However, either because of inadequate chopping of the particles or poorly controlled movement of the particles, they do not perform an adequate shredding action on the vegetation and tend to become clogged.
None of these heretofore known devices can be used to perform a number of different tasks such as vegetation shredding and/or chopping, leaf or snow blowing and vacuum cleaning.
Therefore, a need exists for an inexpensive lawn maintenance device for rotary-type lawn mowers which can be used to perform a number of lawn maintenance functions.